NEWS
FLASH: WashingtonState Joins Oregon in Allowing Assisted Suicide.
In March 2009 Assisted Suicdie become legal in Washington State. Their new law
is similar to the one in Oregon: it
allows terminally
ill patients who are 18 or older, and who have been found mentally competent, to
self-administer lethal drugs under the prescription of a doctor. An opt-out
provision for hospitals was included, partly for the sake of health care
providers affiliated with religious groups like the Roman Catholic
Church.

NEWAn
Aging World: 2001. The International section
of the US Census Bureau has just updated its invaluable guide to the demography
of aging.

NEWS
FLASH: NEWDutch
Legalize Assisted SuicideThe Dutch Parliament voted on Nov. 29, 2000 to allow doctors to help
end the lives of seriously ill patients who have asked to die. The bill,
which is expected to become law in 2001, would make the Netherlands the
first country to legalize mercy killing and doctor-assisted suicide, practices
that are already in wide use, though technically a crime.

NEWS
FLASH: DR. DEATH HAS NEW ADDRESSApril 15, 1999. Following the airing of a video
tape of his assisting in a suicide on the TV show "60 Minutes," Dr. Jack
Kevorkian was again brought to trial and this time he was convicted and
sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison.

NEWS
FLASH: CAUSE OF DEATH: DRUG OVERDOSE, LEGALLY PRESCRIBEDIn the first year of its existence, under what is
now the world's only assisted suicide law, 15 terminally ill people in
Oregon used the statute to end their lives. In the February 18, 1999 issue
of the New England Journal of Medicine, a report by Oregon Health
officials indicated that fears of the law being used as an easy way
out by people afraid of financial ruin or extreme pain proved unfounded.
On the other hand, in the Netherlands, where voluntary euthanasia has been
decriminalized since 1984, a February 1999 report in the Journal of
Medical Ethics indicated that 20 percent of assisted deaths were carried
out without the patient's permission.

NEWS
FLASH: SUPREME COURT DECISION ON ASSISTED SUICIDE.On June 26, 1997 the Supreme Court in a unanimous
decision ruled that terminally ill persons do not have a constitutional
right to a physician-assisted suicide. In doing so the court upheld laws
in New York and Washington state (see introduction and chapter 3), making
it illegal for doctors to give drugs to patients who want to speed up the
end of their lives. The court later ruled in a related Florida case
against a man dying of AIDS patient whose right to an assisted suicide
were being claimed under that state's privacy rights granted in the Florida
constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court Decision in the assisted suicide case
of WASHINGTON
et al. v. GLUCKSBERG et. al. Argued January 8, 1997 and Decided June
26, 1997.

THE POOR ALSO GET ACCESS TO "DEATH WITH DIGNITY"In February of 1998, an Oregon panel which runs
the state health plan voted overwhelmingly to spend tax money to pay for
the doctor assisted suicides of terminally ill poor people. This issue
had been left unaddressed when the nation's only "death with dignity" act
was passed in 1994 and reaffirmed by 60% of the votes in 1997. The law
applies to an adult of sound mind who has been given less than six months
to live in the opinion of two doctors. However, physicians may not administer
a lethal dose of medicine, they can only prescribe it. This new policy
still must deal with Federal scrutiny as the US Congress in April 1997
passed a law which forbids Federal funds from being used to cover doctor-assisted
suicide. In March of 1998, a women suffering from breast cancer was officially
noted as the first person to make use of the law.

NEWS
FLASH: Even before the fall of the Soviet Union male life expectancy
in Russia was plummeting and it has only gotten worse. Find out the details
in "Russia's Demographic "Crisis": How Real Is It?," by Julie DaVanzo and
David Adamson: http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/IP162/

National Policy and Resource Center on Women and
Aging. This new center at Brandies University seeks to focus national attention
on the special problems of women as they age, to develop solutions and
strategies for dealing with these problems, and to reach out to women and
organizations across the country, promoting the changes necessary to improve
older women's lives. Check it out at: www.heller.brandeis.edu/national/ind.html

RESEARCH
TO FOLLOW:The work of Maria Cattell in chapter 4 provides an
ethnographic window into the, day-to-day, life of older widows in rural
Kenya. For a brief look at ongoing work among the Akan people of Ghanaclick
on "Elderly people in Ghana: ongoing anthropological research," by Sjaak
van der Geest. http://acs.tamu.edu/~yarak/GSC97Geest.html

NEWOLDER
WOMEN AND CULTURAL CONTEXT IN INDIA. In this
article by Leela Gulati, "Population
Ageing and Women in Kerala State, India," the author shows how
the situation in one of India's most prosperous regions alters the often
negative context of older females in other parts of that nation. This is
from: Asia-Pacific Population Journal Vol. 8 No. 1 (1993, pp. 53-63).

GENDER AND AGING. The International section
of the US Census Bureau is a crucial resource for learning about the global
dimension of population aging. Their web site now allows you to download
and read many of their reports on particular countries at: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/publist.html
see publications under International Briefs, Populations Trends and Aging
Trends. A good follow-up to Chapter 1 by Kevin Kinsella in the Cultural
Context of Aging text is the online, "International Brief: Gender and Aging,"
by Yvonne Gist and Victoria Velkoff, 1997.

http://www.census.gov/ftp/pub/ipc/www/idbpyr.html
BUILD A PYRAMID. This page from the census bureau actually allows you
to obtain population pyramids (graphs that show the distribution of population
by age and sex) for most countries of the world. For example select Mexico
and you can get projected pyramids graphs for 1997, 2025, 2050.

http://pr.aoa.dhhs.gov/aoa/stats/profile/
A PROFILE OF OLDER AMERICANS: 2000. An excellent resource for students
providing the most up-to-date data and charts on such things as living
arrangements, marital status and ethnic composition and many other variables.

http://pr.aoa.dhhs.gov/aoa/stats/aging21/
AGING INTO THE 21ST CENTURY. This special report was prepared by noted
demographer Jacob Siegel. It provides the latest projections on the future
elderly population. Includes population, marital status, and household
information as well as information about labor force participation, income,
education, living arrangements, and life expectancy. Twenty statistical
tables are included using a variety of the latest sources. This report
was developed by AOA's National Aging Information Center.

Buckley, C.J. 1996. "Gender, age and the marriage
market: evidence on marriage in late adulthood in Russia." Journal of
Cross-Cultural Gerontology 11(3):255-67.

Dworkin, G., R Frey and S. Bok. 1998. Euthanasia
and Physician-Assisted Suicide. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Two noted philosophers and a famous ethicist debate the pros and cons of
legalizing physician assisted suicide.

Paoletti, I. 1998. Being an older woman: a study
in the social production of identity. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.